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Whitehorse

The Westmark hotel in Skagway had coffee makers in the room, and we got an unexpected boon from Jackie in the form of instant oatmeal packets. Basically, we didn’t have to pay Skagway prices for breakfast (the hotel breakfast buffet was $18.95), and just made oatmeal.7 am was “bags out” time, meaning that any bags that we wanted the tour company to transport had to be sitting outside the room. I think we won the contest for smallest checked baggage, with the front 2 bags for Merrianne and Roderick, with the rear 2 bags for Jackie and Steve.Justin, our tour guide, advised us that we would be walking ONE block to the train station. Someone in our group was unable to make the walk, so he said that anyone who had trouble could be ferried over by Samantha (on the right in the picture).

In case you wondered what Tonya Harding was doing nowadays…The train ride was outstanding. It was a narrated tour, but those who wanted to could go outside to the platforms between cars.One thing to remember is that the whole train is riding on rails spaced less than 3 feet apart.

We saw a few Caribou (Reindeer) running, but my video of them was lousy. I’m recording in 320×240 for file size. The train took as as far as Fraiser, Canada, where we transferred to a bus.

We stopped in Carcross, which was originally called Caribou Crossing. I didn’t see much of interest there, except that many of the new stores were portable trailers. Ingenious.

We passed by a small desert, a rare thing in the Yukon Territory. The bus driver said it was an ancient beach.As we had eaten on the train and bus, we didn’t need lunch when we arrived in Whitehorse, Canada. It was a clean, beautiful city, and I didn’t have the feeling that everyone was trying to make a buck off me, like in Skagway, Alaska. We rested a bit at the hotel, then rented bikes. It was $12.50 for 2 hours.We took a detour onto a small island, which turned out to be rough riding due to exposed roots.

Along the ride, we saw signs of Beaver activity, arctic squirrels, and even an Eagle’s nest.After returning the bikes, we had dinner at Klondike Rib and Salmon. Fantastic food, and huge portions.